


An Eternity With You

by nullsession



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Dream Bubbles, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, POV Second Person, Swimming, building sand castles, but maybe they don't have to be, mentions of others - Freeform, seadweller anatomy, the dream bubbles are very lonely places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 10:55:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15772692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nullsession/pseuds/nullsession
Summary: You were almost glad that there were no timelines where the two of you were together because you and Sol were always doomed. You didn't want to imagine living in a timeline where you didn't love him, or living in a timeline where he didn't loveyou.





	An Eternity With You

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very proud of this, I hope you enjoy.

You are currently hunched up in a ball behind a broken wall, cowering into yourself as you hear the horrid screams of winged creatures flying around you. They are looking for you, you know they are. You can feel their eyeless faces searching for you. You tuck your head closer to your knees and grip your hair hard.

You don't know how long you've been hiding, terrified of the inevitability of them finding you, but you haven't felt your heart stop pounding in fear for hours. You wonder if your fear will leave permanent damage to your heart.

Life wasn't fair. It was hard and nobody understood. How could they? They all got planets that were cool and exciting, while you got one that was terrifying. That was just your luck, bad things always happened to you.

You'd been asking Kar to come over and hang out, hiding in twos was much less lonely, but he claimed to be busy. You just knew he was off with the others on their cooler planets.

You hear a screech of one of the angels, closer to you than the others before and just know that they have found you. Your hiding spot is not protecting you anymore. Time to look for a new one.

You were a coward, you've always been a coward. You were complicated in matters concerning your fear for your safety and this wasn’t different. You wanted to live and you didn’t think these things were gonna make it easy on you.

If these things were coming for you, then there was only one thing you could think to do.

Kill them before they killed you. That was how you’ve lived your life thus far and you couldn’t imagine ever living it any differently.

 

You do not believe in heaven but the afterlife is very much real. You have a lot of time to reflect as you float around in your bubble, but you never liked to think very hard, so you spend most of the time bored outta your mind. It was nice though, the boredom. Boredom meant there was no longer any fear. You don't remember what it was like not living in fear of what lurked around the corner. You knew this was why you wanted to turn yourself over to Jack. The worst thing that could happen was he would kill you. He would kill you or accept you and either way the fear would have been over. It was the waiting that you couldn't stand. The waiting for him to show up and kill you when you weren't ready. You were ready then and even though it wasn't Jack who ended up killing you, you don't feel any animosity toward Kanaya. Well, not much anyways. 

You wonder if Feferi’s bubble will ever float near enough for you to see it. 

You’re own bubble is floating on the edge of another, still too far away from you to see it clearly but it looks vaguely familiar. It looks dark and reminds you of the lab. It isn’t until it’s nearly touching your own that you realize that it is not the lab, but a hive full of broken husktops and wires. You want to ask yourself who would want to spend their afterlife in such a messy place, but you know the answer to that before something, or rather someone, crosses over into your bubble.

He floats down toward where you are sitting with your legs underneath you, on the sand. He’s silent for a moment, just looking at you as his own feet hit the solid ground underneath him. You wonder if you should speak but you wouldn’t know what to say. It doesn’t matter anyways because he speaks first and you’re almost dreading the words as his mouth opens.

“Why did you kill her if you claimed to love her so much more than anyone?”

You sigh heavily, dragging out your breath in hopes to buy you some time. Time for what. You weren't sure. It’s not like you needed time, you already had an abundance of it. If anything, all you had anymore _was_ time. “I didn't mean to.” You don't really feel too bad now that you're dead. You know you're sorry but you don't feel the need to grovel at his feet. You were already dead, there was nothing more you could give him other than your words. Everything else you once had was already gone, you couldn't even give him the satisfaction of your pain. “I knocked you out and it looked bad, real bad but I knew you were alive. I wasn't tryin’ a kill you, ya know? But she came at me with her trident and I just knew she was gonna skewer me. So I panicked and I pointed my wand at her and killed her and then I killed Kan before runnin’ away.” You were a coward who killed before they could be killed. You knew this. You’ve always known this. “Of course Kan wasn't actually dead so she found me and cut me in half and that was that.” You lift your shirt up a bit to show him the nasty scar you have and shrug. “Sorry.” 

“Sorry?,” he mocks nastily. “That's it?”

“What do you want me to say, Sol? That I wouldn't do it again? I don't know if I would or wouldn't or if I _could_ stop myself. I was scared and now I'm dead and I'm not scared anymore. It's over, Sol.”

He sighs heavily out of his nose and seats himself on the sand, hard. You watch the waves go by in the ocean that your bubble has and you feel strangely at peace. You thought this was going to go more badly to be honest and you’re not sure if you should wait for the other shoe to drop. You don’t feel any impending danger tickling your senses so you let yourself relax to the sound of the waves.

“Do you know how to swim?” You ask him after a while. Your sense of time was never very good, you were the prince of hope not time, and the afterlife didn’t do anything to help you in that sense. You don’t even remember how long it’s been since you died, how long the timeline has gone on for since then. It could have been days or weeks or seconds, you doubt you’d be surprised by any answer.

“What?” He asks.

You don’t look at him, but you kind of want to. “Swim. Do you know how?”

He looks at you strangely, you can see it from the corner of your eye, before rolling his eyes and looking back at the water. “Of course not. No troll can swim unless they're sea dwellers.”

“Do you wanna learn how?”

You think he looks at you like you're crazy and you shrug. 

“We don't have anythin’ else t’do.” And it was true. Time was all you had now and the ocean looked so inviting, you could hardly bare the thought of Sol never having been in its embrace.

Sol sighs heavily again and you can't help but think that Sollux breathes more now than when he was alive. You also wonder why he's even still here if he was so angry at you. You think it's the gentle lull of the bubble floating around that lessens his rage like it does with yours. “Fine, whatever.”

You get up and pull your sweater over your head and your pants off your legs, not bothering to fold them how you would when you were alive. He looks at you a little wide eyed when you ruffle your leg fins, but he doesn’t comment. His eyes follow you as you near the shore, letting the water lap at your toes. You wiggle them as best you can, they're webbed after all, and feel the sand pull your feet under. It's finer than the sand had been on Alternia but you don't mind that there's no shards of shells biting at the bottoms of your feet. You turn to Sol and stretch out a hand, beckoning him toward you. He sighs again and stands up, shedding his own shirt and jeans and leaving him in his boxers like you currently were. He joins you easily and lets the water lap at his own feet before joining you deeper until the water is grazing the fins on your calves. 

He looks at your fins again as they sway gently against the water and you think he’s staring.

“What?” You ask.

“Feferi didn't have any leg fins.”

You tilt your head in question. Fef obviously didn’t have any leg fins. She went around in skirts and there were none. You didn’t really see what he was getting at. “No.”

“I didn't think sea dwellers had leg fins or any fins besides the ones on their ears.” 

You suddenly feel a little self conscience. You never really thought about what you looked like beyond the surface of presenting yourself neatly. You’d never thought about how different you were compared to the others, but you're realizing it now. You have wavy fins along the back of your calves and along your forearms and while they were usually hidden under your sweater and tight pants, they were very much on display now. 

You run your hand over one on your arm, covering it briefly, and shrug. “Some of us have fins, some of us don't.”

“They're annoyingly pretty,” he tells you and you look up at him at his words. He never once paid you a compliment, but you’re almost sure that was one.

You let your hand fall off your arm, cheeks heating up as he continues to gaze at them. 

You stretch your leg out to him jokingly. “You wanna feel them?” You don't expect him to actually touch you and you're surprised when he grabs you behind the knee. He lifts his other hand toward your leg and runs his hand gently along your calf, finger tips barely touching. The ends of your fins are paper thin and translucent, delicate and wavy where they curl against Sollux’s hand. They were darker toward the base, but still a lighter shade than the ones on your ears. You were always conscience enough of them when you were alive to worry over them tearing, troll nails were very sharp and your fins were very fragile, but you're not worried Sollux will harm them. His gaze is focused and curious instead of malicious.

“They're soft.” Troll skin tended to be very thick and tough but you were among very few sea dwellers the had thinner, softer skin, than the rest. You don't think about how having more fish like qualities is probably a birth defect and instead tell yourself that it makes you special.

“My skin is softer than most sea dwellers.” You never really let anyone get this close to you besides Feferi. You didn't like how you could see the small veins running under your skin. You felt fragile in that moment with your leg held by a troll that was stronger than you and could probably rip your vascular system right out of your chest with his psionics if he felt like it. You remember that you're already dead and your worry soothes a little. 

He runs his hand over the rest of your calf and his eyebrow raises. “You weren't kidding. How did you not get cut up with skin this thin?”

“I had a gun,” you tell him seriously. Sea dwellers never wanted to confront you, you had very little qualms about taking their lives after all. You were not, however, a fan of physical confrontation and the times that another seadweller had come at you teeth first when you didn't have a weapon, you'd swam away. “And I'm a very fast swimmer.”

“Huh.” He rubs his hand over the rest of your leg, down to your ankle and then up to your knee. You can feel your blood rush to your face and when he touches the base of your fin you squeak and lose your balance, falling down and taking him with you. He groans as he hits the ground hard and you bend your knees and pull your legs close to you, face warm in embarrassment and the remnants of the spark that ran up your leg and settled into heat between your thighs.

“What the hell, ED.”

You can hardly look at him. You remember then that you died a virgin and the warmth in your cheeks turns into shame. You press your face into your drawn up knees and try to calm yourself. You can feel slick trying to escape you and you clamp your thighs tighter, feeling tears threaten to escape your eyes.

“Hey.” His voice is a lot closer than it had been a moment ago. “Did I hurt you?”

You shake your head and give him a muffled, “No.”

“Then what's wrong?”

You shake your head again. You were just a desperate troll that has never been touched like you were delicate and they didn't want to break you. Like you were something worth keeping unharmed and unbroken. You were dead now. Dead and alone. You remember that you died before ever being loved. You can't hold back your tears any more and you're glad you're sitting in the water, at the very least embraced by the lull of the waves around you, if never by a lover. Being dead didn't feel very nice then.

He touches your shoulder and you flinch away, falling backwards and he can see your tear stricken face. You panic and hastily crawl further into the ocean until it's deep enough to dive into. You swim further until you're sure he couldn't reach you if he tried, and let yourself sink to the ocean floor, resuming your previous position.

 

You don't know how long you stay there but you're expecting him to be gone when you resurface. You're surprised to find him sitting on the shoreline building an impressive sandcastle.

“Sol?” You ask as you near the edge of the water, where he's building a moat around his castle. He looks up at you and raises an eyebrow, but doesn't comment. “You still here?” You press.

He shrugs. “Didn't feel like leaving. Turns out my bubble is pretty shit compared to this place.” You had seen his bubble when it floated near yours. It seemed to be his hive and you can't imagine why that would be shit, as he put it, but then again you wouldn't want your bubble to be your hive either. Your hive alway felt very cold and unwelcoming since you'd lived alone on land while your lusus lived in the sea. Compared to your hive, this shoreline was a much nicer place to spend the rest of your existence. You couldn't blame him if he agreed and it actually warmed your heart to see him appreciate it as well. 

You sit beside him, your legs under you, as you pick a shell off the ground and place it on one side of his castle.

He raises an eyebrow at you again in question and you find yourself shrugging this time. “I'm decoratin’.”

He continues adding to the structure while you find rocks and shells and discarded leaves to place on and around the castle. You even end up drawing swirls and waves on the walls to give the place more life. When he finishes building he sits back and watches you draw lazily. 

“Not too bad.” You finish then and you have to agree. You hadn't taken the time to build a sandcastle since you were wide eyed and tiny but you still find the act relaxing and fun. 

“I wish there was more to do in these shitty bubbles than think,” he tells you. “I’ve done enough thinking to last me several lifetimes.”

You could agree with that. Everytime you actually got to thinking how your life went, you just ended up hurting yourself like you had when you remembered how lonely and unpitiable you were. You shake your head to clear your thoughts and look absently back at the sandcastle.

“Weren’t you going to teach me to swim?”

“You still want to?”

He shrugs. “Why not.” You nod once and lift yourself up, getting into the water until it’s up to your waist before turning around. He walks toward you into the water, and stops a little in front of you. “It’s warm.”

The ocean back on Alternia was colder than this one, but you didn’t mind the warmth. You’re sure he’s glad it’s not the freezing temperatures you were used to. 

“I think you should first get used to the water.” You sit down cross legged so that the water is grazing your shoulders now and he follows soon after. He’s stiff and you think it’s because he’s not as comfortable in the sea as you are. You almost want to tell him that it’s kinda like sopor slime, but it really isn’t and you doubt it gives him the same calming feelings it gives you. You can feel the corner of your mouth turn up as you get an idea. You raise your hands from your sides and over the water before hastily bringing them down onto the surface with a smack. 

He blinks away the water that hit his face and actually looks shocked. “Did you just… splash me?”

You grin more openly now. “I did, what a you goin’ to do about it?”

He raises his own hands and you barely have a chance to lift up your arms to cover your face before he’s splashing you back, multiple times and with a lot more force than you put into your own splash.

“Sol,” you laugh, splashing him back and you’re both splashing so hard you can barely see him through the onslaught of water being thrown in your face.

“Eat shit, ED.”

“Okay, okay,” you try placating as he continues to splash you. You’ve backed up quite a bit and you can barely touch the ground now. He stops splashing for a second before he’s waving his arms, trying to hold on to something that isn’t there.

“Shit, shit,” he says as he struggles. You think he just realized that he can’t feel the ground either but the look of panic on his face is so _cute_ you can’t help but laugh. “Don’t laugh at me fishface. Can’t you see I’m drowning? Help me!”

You swim toward him and roll your eyes. “Quit bein’ so dramatic, you’re fine.” As soon as you’re close enough he grabs onto your shoulders and practically shoves himself on top of you, using you to float and causing him to shove your face under water. You get his hands off your head and shove them down to around your back so you can at least get your head above water. He still looks a bit panicked but now that he’s floating, he has enough sense to glare at you.

“This was your plan all along, wasn’t it? To get me in the water so you can drown me.”

You roll your eyes again and huff out a breath. “We’re already dead, you imbecile. Besides, it’s really not that deep.”

“Says that guy that can breathe underwater.”

“I wouldn’t let you drown. I’ve got you, now quit bein’ so dramatic. I thought I was the dramatic one.”

“You are.” He’s no longer clinging to you, but he still has his hands ready to grip on tighter if you decide to swim away. 

“You wanna get out a the water?”

He glares at you knowing that if you wanted to, you could go deeper and not give him a choice. “Yes.”

You nod once and start swimming toward the shore. He let’s go of you as soon as his feet can reach the sand and you’re almost sad at the loss of contact, but you don’t let it show. 

There really isn’t much to do once he’s back on the sand so you just let yourself lay on your back on the shallow water, making sure to keep your gills closed so no sand goes into them as the shore recedes around you.

“Is this what you’ve been doing since?”

You don’t have to ask since when. “Pretty much.”

“And I thought my afterlife was boring. I atleast have a husktop to talk to the rest of our doomed piece of shit friends.”

You shrug. What was the point of having a husktop. “They wouldn’t talk to me if I had one.” You’re not bitter. You just realized that you were never really close to anyone but Fef and maybe Kar and Fef probably didn’t want to talk to you ever again and you were sure Kar was still alive. “It’s okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.” 

“That people don’t want to talk to you or pay attention to you, that’s okay?”

“Yes, Sol. That’s okay.”

“Who are you and what have you done with ED?”

“I’m dead Sol. I’m okay with a lot of things.”

“Bullshit.”

You turn your head to face him. “What?”

“That’s bullshit. All the being dead makes everything okay that AA always went on about is complete and utter bullshit.”

“I’m okay with being dead, Sol.”

“That doesn’t mean it hurts any less.”

He was probably right. You wouldn’t be feeling your heart sitting heavily in your throat if you didn’t still have feelings about dying even if you were okay with being dead.

You sigh and relent. “There were so many things I still wanted to do. My life wasn’t supposed to be like this. I sometimes wonder what it would have been like if we never had to play that stupid game.”

Sollux scoffs. “Easy for you to say, your highness.”

You sit up and look at him more surely. “Would being culled be any different than what happened in the game? You died in the end anyways, just as young as you would have on Alternia.”

“As opposed to you who died too young? A sea dweller in his prime, killed before he even had a chance. How tragic.”

“Yeah,” you agree even though you know he meant it sarcastically. “It’s kinda tragic for us both. I mean, I thought I was destined for greatness and I ended up here with you, someone who was always doomed. That’s kinda sad.”

Sollux closes his eyes and faces up toward the artificial sky of your bubble. “I always knew I was going to die, but I didn’t think it was going to be like this.”

You wonder then suddenly how it is he died. You know you weren’t the one to kill him and you’re only just realizing that you don't know who or what did. “How did you die?”

He shakes his head. “It was stupid, honestly. It’s never fair. But,” he opens his eyes and for a second all you see is darkness where his eyes should be but he blinks and the red and blue of his corneas are back and you think you must have imagined it. “Everyone else is fine for now. That’s all I could do to make sure they were fine.”

Sol was always the sacrificing himself for the greater good type. You think he’d have lived much longer if he had any sense of self preservation. “At least you died for a noble cause. I was just scared.”

“We’re both here now, aren’t we?”

You look at him again and he’s staring back at you, a grimace that is almost a smile gracing his face. “Yeah, I guess so.”

 

The bubbles are strange places. There is no sense of time, no hours or days and the sun never comes up from where you've dreamt of the dusk. It makes the whole place have a purple and pink tint that you're so fond of, but it makes it hard to tell how long you've been laying in the sand as Sollux looks at the faint stars. 

“Do you think we'll be here forever?” You have to ask. You would say you were dying to know but you've never really been one for jokes. You don't know if there's anything after this, Feferi made these bubbles and it would probably be just as easy to destroy them, and you need to know that you're not the only one wondering. If they were gone, what would happen to you? To Sol? Would you cease to exist? Did you still exist?

“I don't know,” he tells you honestly. “Would it be the worst thing if we will?”

“It might be the worst thing if we won't.” You mumble to yourself sadly but you think he hears you because he lets out a long shaky breath. 

“ED.”

“Yeah?”

“Stand up.”

You turn to look at him. “What?”

“Stand up.” He's already getting up himself and he seems adamant that you get up too. There's really no reason not to, so you get up too and look at him blankly when you're on your feet. “Come here.”

You raise a brow but don't bother arguing and go to him. 

“Closer.”

“Sol?”

“I said closer.”

You're facing him now, he's a little taller than you are but you're basically the same height. You've never really looked at him this closely. The shade of his eyes are bright and hollow and they'd be unnerving if you didn't know him. They're still a bit unnerving even though you do. He licks his lips and they're chapped but you can't really blame him, the sea air is making your own skin dry too. 

“ED.”

“What?”

“I'm going to kiss you now.” You don't have time to do anything but widen your eyes before his lips touch yours, gently and barely there. It's the softest kiss you've ever gotten but it didn't give you the same pale feelings you'd had for Fef, no matter how weak they'd been in the first place. There's a warmth that spreads through your body as you look at his face this closely, his eyes closed and eyelashes fanned over his cheek. You close your own eyes and press your lips against his too. It doesn't last very long but you think, for a fleeting moment, that this may have been worth dying for.

He pulls away and you open your eyes to see him looking at you.

 _What was that for?_ you want to ask but all you can get out is a soft, “Why?”

He shrugs. “Just felt like it.”

You nod and swallow. You can't seem to look at his eyes directly so your own are darting from the bridge of his nose to his eyebrows and he smiles. His smile has always been more of a smirk and while it used to infuriate you, it makes your face flush violet when directed at you. 

“Can I?” You begin to ask and he nods. You lean in and kiss him again and it's still gentle but there's more heat behind it. You're both dead, your heart stopped beating long ago, but you feel like there's sparks under your skin and it leaves you breathless. He places his hands on your cheeks and adjusts the angle, deepening the kiss. You wind your arms around his neck and run your fingers through his hair. You're vaguely aware that you're shaking and you hope he can't feel it. 

He pulls away from you to breathe and that thought you had earlier returns to you. You think breathing might be a clutch from life that he's taken into the bubbles because while you feel breathless, your chest does not move while his own heaves with heavy sighs. 

You smile a little, tentative but genuine, at his breathlessness. You were used to being bold, even if it wasn't always the best choice, and Sollux makes you feel small. You're realizing now that it might not be a bad thing to feel small enough to be held and protected and cared for. You don't know if Sollux even cares for you or if he really is just doing this because he's bored and died too young, but you're dead too and you'd have forever to get over the heartbreak.

You're not in love with him, but maybe you could be.

He raises a brow at you and you know your expression is love stricken because his face is smug and he's pulling you in for another kiss before you can say anything to wipe the look off his face. 

Time does not exist in the bubbles and for that, you are grateful. There's a feeling in your chest that feels like warmth when you have always been so cold and you would do anything for this feeling to be eternal.

“What's with that look, ED?” He asks when he pulls away again. His lips are gold and glistening and your face flushes deeper. 

“I don't have a look.”

He doesn't seem to believe you but he doesn't push it either. You're glad. You don't know what that look means either. 

He doesn't kiss you again but he does reach down to hold your hand and leads you back to the edge of the water. You’re still in just your underwear but it doesn't feel exposing when the water is close enough to touch.

He doesn't let your hand go when you step further to let your feet touch the water, and instead follows you into it. You don't know why that action warms your heart. Maybe it's because you thought he'd had enough of the water, and he might only be doing this for you, because you want to be in the water and if being with you meant being in the water too, he would do it. 

You've always fallen hard and fast, but this time you're not worried. You have nothing but time to get this one right. 

“Do you want to build another sandcastle?”

You look at Sollux. He’s facing you, the sea breeze tussling his hair and salty air making him blink to keep his bright eyes from watering. His hand is still in yours, his skin thick and warm against your own thinner, cooler hand, and you feel yourself smiling. Maybe he's just bored and maybe you're still desperate but right now, in this moment, it doesn’t feel like a bad thing. You could build sand castles forever if that was what he wanted. 

“Yeah.”

He smiles back and you can't help but think that an eternity in this bubble wasn't so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> Erisol is kinda my muse right now I just love them so much  
> ~comments and kudos are appreciated.


End file.
